1. Field
The claimed subject matter relates to a method and apparatus to improve the transmission of data between two or more buses.
2. Background Information
Often two or more bus protocols may co-exist within a device or system. This may occur in a variety of circumstances, such as, for example, as one bus protocol begins to supplant another bus protocol, the two protocols may co-exist and be utilized substantially simultaneously within a system. In this context, a device, which translates or reformats data transactions from one bus protocol to another, is referred to, in this context, as a bridge.
Typically, there is a loss in efficiency and throughput when a data transaction is translated or reformatted by a bridge. Depending on the protocols utilized, one protocol may utilize information not provided by the other. In this case, the loss in throughput and efficiency may be increased. For example, if a data transaction transmits data from the bus utilizing the protocol without the extra information (hereafter, xe2x80x9cthe first busxe2x80x9d) to the bus utilizing the protocol with the extra information (hereafter, xe2x80x9cthe second busxe2x80x9d), a bridge may not initiate a data transfer on the second bus until the bridge is capable of accurately generating the missing information. In a specific example, currently, if a data transaction occurs between a bus which does not specify the length of the data transaction (the first bus), and a bus with does specify the length of the data transaction (the second bus), the bridge will buffer the entire transaction to determine the proper length of the transaction, before initiating a data transfer on the second bus. This may create a loss of efficiency and throughput as the data transaction may be stalled while being buffered. A need, therefore, exists for an improved system or technique for the transmission of data between two or more buses.